Co-operative Movement Confronts Centralization: Israeli Kibbutz Regional Organizations

Abstract

Co-operative movements, collectives and alternative institutions existing within a larger environment of opposing values have limited success in maintaining egalitarian and co-operative practices. When these collectives attempt to form centralized organizations they confront patterns of bureaucratization and stratification common to the institutions of the dominant society. Theoretical issues of the inevitability of increasing organizational hierarchy, standardization and routinization are addressed in the study of three kibbutz regional institutions. Based on fieldwork conducted in the 1970s, the study indicates that regional advances have caused conflicts for kibbutz social structure. The co-operative system will never transform capitalist society. To convert social production into one large and harmonious system of free and co-operative labour, general social changes are wanted, changes of the general condition of society... K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1